Center Lists Skills Both Disabled, Nondisabled Should Have

A federally funded research center has unveiled a list of academic
and life skills it says all students--disabled as well as
nondisabled--should have upon leaving school.

The wide-ranging list compiled by the National Center for
Educational Outcomes at the University of Minnesota includes 25
outcomes for what young people should gain from school and 77
indicators of whether those outcomes are being achieved. Developed over
two years with the assistance of hundreds of educators nationwide, the
list is intended as a model that states, school districts, and other
groups can use to gauge how well all students are doing.

"We ought to be trying to achieve the best possible outcomes for all
kids,'' said James E. Ysseldyke, the director of the center. "We
shouldn't have a separate system of outcomes and educators for disabled
kids.''

While the architects of national school reforms have begun talking
in recent years about improving schooling for all children, children
with disabilities have largely been overlooked by the nationwide push
to measure the outcomes of schooling for students.

National assessment efforts, for example, vary widely in the degree
to which they include students with disabilities. Curriculum standards
and frameworks being developed by some states and at the national level
tend to focus only on specific academic skills that are unachievable
for many disabled students.

Even among special educators, data on how well disabled students are
doing is limited. For example, state-level special educators, long used
to documenting the process of special education but not the results,
often do not measure student achievement or any other outcomes of
schooling for their students.

"There is now a lack of ability to say anything about the status of
kids with disabilities within the larger system or even in [an
individual] system,'' said Ken Olsen, a technical-assistance specialist
at the Mid-South Regional Resource Center at the University of Kentucky
who reviewed the outcomes. "We can't say how well we do.''

Broader Skills

The recommendations by the national center attempt to plug that gap
and to suggest more inclusive accountability measures by laying out
some broad academic and life skills young people should gain from
school.

Not often found on lists of educational outcomes, the life skills
identified by the center include the ability to get along with others,
to be responsible for one's self, and to successfully manage daily
life.

Upon leaving school, the indicators say, students should be able to
make "healthy lifestyle choices,'' to cope with stresses, and to
volunteer in their communities, among other outcomes.

In the area of more traditional academic outcomes, the researchers
state that all students should demonstrate competence in mathematics,
reading, writing, and other academic areas.

They suggest, however, that a more inclusive way to measure those
skills might be to determine the percentage of students who exhibit the
competence needed in order to succeed in their "next environment.''

"For some kids, [that] could mean a college or university, but, for
others, [it] could mean working at McDonald's or participating in some
kind of job-skills training program,'' Mr. Ysseldyke said.

In that respect, he added, the center's list is compatible with some
other, narrower student-achievement measures already in place.

'A Big Gap'

Whether regular educators will readily accept such outcomes,
however, is an open question.

Most states and communities judge how well their schools are doing
almost exclusively through academic measures. Measures of social and
behavioral outcomes are harder to find.

"I think there'll be some difficulty,'' said Martin Orland, the
associate director of analysis and reporting for the National Education
Goals Panel.

The national education goals, for example, call for all students to
enter school "ready to learn.'' Within systems that are geared toward
academic measures of learning, however, finding ways to measure the
nation's progress in meeting that goal has been difficult, according to
Mr. Orland.

"I think there's a recognition [that measuring nonacademic factors
is] a good thing to be able to do, but that's different from being able
to accommodate it very easily,'' he said. "There's a big gap between
what is proposed in these outcomes and current systems of
measurement.''

Mr. Ysseldyke said the center is working on recommending ways
educators can measure some of the more nontraditional outcomes listed
in the report. Some of the data, he said, are already available from
student records or from student surveys.

The list of outcomes and indicators is the first of several for the
center. In the next few weeks, it will also unveil recommendations for
what students should know and be able to do by grades 3 and 6 as well
as post-school outcomes for students.

Copies of the 25-page document, "Educational Outcomes and Indicators
for Students Completing School,'' are available for $8 each by writing:
Publications Office, the National Center for Educational Outcomes, 350
Elliott Hall, 75 East River Rd., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis,
Minn. 55455.

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